Cock,
Crowing:
Inflation! Inflation is coming! Right Here In River City, Trouble
with a capital 'I'. That's the gist of Dallas
Fed President Richard Fisher's
rationale for an immediate hike in interest rates, to prevent
unemployment from falling below some magic number 7%, 6% and why the
first thing you know the interest the rich get won't keep up.One of these days the
sun will, in fact, come up, but not for a while. And Fisher's
cackling will not be the cause.

Sticks
& Stones:
Russia says that the airspace of Syria is “under its protection”
and that Russia will retaliate against the US if it continues to
violate Syria's sovereign airspace. Okay, so just how?

Good
News/Bad:
Climate change is no longer a threat to our children's' future. It
is a threat to us, today; it's already here. Playbook:
The Republicans are turning to “religious freedom” and
“religious liberty” as the main code-words for this fall's
speeches. This is supposed to make them “more inclusive and
welcoming” on social issues. They see it as a way of fooling women
into supporting the GOP even though it holds
them in contempt and
votes against their interests most of the time. According to Rand
Paul the nation is in the midst of a “spiritual crisis” and that
“America needs a revival.” What the country needs, they claim, is
the freedom to impose
conservative Christianity on others, here and abroad, to
require Christian
prayer in evolution-free schools, to
force Jews to wear
yellow stars, Muslims to be dead and all Buddhists to be kindly old
Asian guys.

Got
Five, Do Hear
I Six?
Guy in Kansas didn't pay his taxes, so the state tax cops closed his
business and confiscated his inventory and now the state is actioning
off the material seized, which includes dildos, blow-up sex partners,
porn videos, a variety of magazines, and condoms in
assorted flavors.

Rights,
Wronged:Collingdale,
PA police decided to give a local couple grounds to get rich by
issuing a citation to them for videotaping them inside their own
home. Cops just don't get the concept that they are public servants
doing the people's business and are subject to being recorded... and
being sued if they get nasty about it.

Quit
While You Can:
Facebook is selling all the information it has on you (and it has a
lot) to a new ad network, Atlas, which will inundate you with ads
wherever you go, based on your Facebook info.

And
I Quote:
'Littering — the
death penalty is probably too strong — but it ought to be punished
really severely.” Fox's
Tucker Carlson, after arguing that only rich people care about global
warming. True,
True: “Americans
have no idea how much the Masters of the Universe are paid and
vastly underestimate
the concentration of wealth at the top.”

Location,
Location:Sarah
Palin claims
that 'Truth
is an endangered species at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue.' And
other places, too.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Define
'Civilian':
The US wants
to impose a 'no-fly' zone over Syria in order to protect civilians
from airstrikes. The assumption is that US airstrikes do not kill
civilians.

Either/Or:Obama says
that the public's mistrust of the police is corroding America. Maybe
it's because the cops think nothing of medically
paralyzing a person to conduct a 'cavity search'. Or that
district attorneys in LA want to give the cops blanket
authority to conduct warrantless hotel/motel registration
searches to see
who they can blackmail. Several
Days Late:
After sterilizing 39 female inmates without their consent in the last
decade, California has decided that maybe they should ask permission.

Observed: Most of the poor
have jobs. The problem is that even with jobs'
many do not earn enough
to get by.
A Martian might
conclude that either our bills are too high or our jobs don't pay
enough. Democracy should not mean having the freedom to slowly
starve while working full time. It should not mean having the
freedom and the
necessity to choose
between groceries or dental care. It should not require that most of
us to support the rich while depriving our children of their futures.

Back
To The Future:
The Turkish government,
turning its back on
Kemal Atatürk, has banned makeup, tattoos and piercings among
students, but will now
allow the wearing of
headscarves – pending
mandatory burkas for all females over the age of 3.

Factoid:
Thirty-four percent of the US workforce is made up of “freelancers”,
most of whom have no job security, no benefits, no future. And
that's our future, too.

Easy
Button: The US
energy 'boom' is most likely to end a) when all the sweet spots have
been fracked, b) when the Soviet Arctic comes on line, c) when
interest rates rise, d) when the price of West Texas Intermediate
drops below $90, or e) soon.

In
The National Interest:
Australia has banned all reports of “multi-national bribery”
because revealing the extent of government coruption would endanger
the
government's
national security. In the same vein, in order to keep the Australian
secret police happy, internet provider Vodaphone will now keep
track of its customers' web history for at least 90 days,
pretending that this is to "allow its customers to keep track
of how much of their data allowance they are using on particular
sites." Sorry,
So Sorry:Comcast, admitting
that its cusromer service is terrible, has promised to make
improvements, and while it will start billing you for the improved
service now, actual improvement “may take a few years.”

Jargon:
The Air Force sergeant who pled guilty to multiple charges of rape
has had his conviction overturned because military judges did no
think confessing was a sufficient basis for a conviction. In the USAF
“confession” obviously doesn't mean what says in the dictionary.

Small
Business Start-Up:
An industrious young man who secretly siphoned off 1.5 million
gallons of water for his marijuana plantation has been arrested. Bad
business plan, and he over-watered.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Keeping
Score:
While over
50 countries were giving in to US pressure to join the latest
Crusade, ISIS was busy overrunning an Iraqi Army Base on
the outskirts of Baghdad. And in Afghanistan ISIS wannabes
beheaded
15 people just because they could and besides, it makes them feel
important.Definitions:
The FBI is seriously upset with Apple and Google for locking them
out of users'
phones. According to the FBI it is every American's right to be
secretly recorded by the Forces of Good.

The
Winter of Our Discontent:
Russia, having become tired of the Mickey Mouserie, made it clear
that if the EU continued to supply Ukraine with gas while Ukraine
still owes Russia for gas from last year and the year before, various
EU countries would not get any Russian gas. Hungary
got to go first, cutting off Ukraine to keep the hat on at home.
So the EU is going to give Ukraine a few billion dollars to give to
Russia and
everyone will pretend the sanctions mean diddly. That
Didn't Take Long:Short sellers have
begun placing their bets against Alibaba's ridiculous valuations.
Now for Apple.

Remedial
Class:
Remember peak oil? Thought it didn't happen, right. Thought it was
just a passing fancy, right? But production of conventional oil did
peak, back in 2005, just as predicted. The downward economic spiral
came along right on time, too. It hasn't been as dramatic as
expected, mostly because of the US fracking boom. But that's going
to be but a passing fancy – good for a couple more years at most.
And with oil down to $90 a barrel, a lot of would-be fracking wells,
won't be. And the debts that made the last 30, 40 years of
prosperity possible will be called. And then we'll be re-reading
those peak oil prophecies. Proportion:
The same MSM that warn us that ISIS is going to behead people on the
A train are concerned
that Kim Jong
Un may
have gout. Actually, the gout story is more likely true.

Victimization:
In Louisiana a rape victim should check her insurance coverage before
reporting the rape; the cops will charge her for the cost of the
forensic medical exam and related hospital charges – even though
both state and federal guidelines call for these services to be
provided at no cost to the victim. But in Louisiana you are not a
victim of rape until the test results come back.

Balanced
Budget:
Because cops in Montreal
wrote fewer tickets
this summer, the city wants the police union to make up for the
budgetary shortfall that resulted.

Sampler:
“Working longer and longer hours until there is no time left for
anything else is not the best the way to get the freedom [you] are
looking for.” Paul Krugman

Kill
Them All:
Michele Bachmann helpfully points out that Islam is the problem and
the US must “declare war on it.” It says so in the Good Book,
Far Right Edition. Porn
O'Graph:
Jobs, take two, they're small.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Lebensraum: In Germany a new anti-euro party, the Alternative für
Deutschland (AfD) has won 10% of the vote in recent elections. The
sudden strength of this Germany-first party (to be followed by a
Germany for the Germans group and then one with the motto
'Lebensraum') in Angela Merkel's rear-view mirror is bound to affect
her efforts keep the eurozone afloat. That the AfD is right only
adds to the problem.

Tomb
of the Unknowns:
Obama reminded the UN General Assembly that “the cause of empire
leads to the graveyard”. Actually, several graveyards. First
those filled with the conquered, then the conquerors. A
Big Bite: Over
20,000 police across
Europe arrested more
than 1,000 people from
gangs involved in people trafficking, narcotics, gun trafficking and
cybercrime. In one raid 30 children destined for the sex trade were
rescued. The biggest surprise was the secrecy with which the
operation was planned and executed. While more
arrests are expected to follow, don't
expect much to change.

Can
You Hear Me Now?
Russia has carefully explained to the EU that if the natural gas
Russia ships to Europe keeps ending up in Ukraine, they'll have to
stop shipping the gas. And a new law will give Russian courts
authority to seize foreign-owned assets in Russia – an economic
response to economic sanctions. Not
retaliation, no, no, not retaliation. Diplomacy.

Long
Division:The
US Army is preparing to deploy the 1st
Infantry Division's
headquarters to Iraq. Carpe
The Diem:
Australia is succumbing (with the help of self-serving politicians)
to another wave of irrational fear, giving their spy agency, ASIO,
the power to monitor every Australian's every use of the internet,
with special emphasis on harassing journalists. The goal is to
identify and jail whistleblowers. Think of it as the out-of-town
tryouts for NSA & the guys from our Heimatsicherheitsamt.

Fortune
Cookie:
“Democratic political systems are not supposed to end conflict,
[but] given how
self-reinforcing the country’s political malaise is, and how
unlikely the prospects for constructive incremental reform are, the
decay of American politics will probably continue until some external
shock comes along to catalyze a true reform coalition and galvanize
it into action.”

Correction:
The pauperization of the US middle class is not something new. The
median household
income
stalled out way back in
1980. Does know this make you feel better?

Moot
Court: In what
would seem to be (but isn't) a defense mounted by first year law
students, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office claims that a
civilian PA prison clerk who was raped by a prisoner after her
workplace was relocated to an unlocked office in the penitentiary and
who is now suing the state for contributing to the crime had "acted
in a manner which in whole or in part contributed” to
her rape.The
old 'she-asked-for-it' defense.

Is
Our Children Learning:
Down in Texas the way you get your guys onto the school board is to
pay voters either $10 cash or give them a “small bag of cocaine”
to encourage them to vote for your candidates. Probably the family
values/prayer in the schools/anti-evolution bunch.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

From
The Redwood Forests...
The US Forest Service says that the
media (? who, precisely are
'the media'?) must get a $1,500 permit before pictures of trees and
ferns can be taken in any of the 100 million acres of national
wilderness. This land may be your land, but they're in charge.

Bug/Feature:
CVS now claims
that a computer program that caused their pharmacies to routinely
charge women illegal copays for birth control products was “a
glitch”. Their profit projections have been adjusted.WTF?The
Nanny State, in the guise of national security, has been monitoring
Huntsville, AL school students'
Facebook pages and other internet use, looking for malcontent and
non-conformist teens. Privacy? These are school kids, they don't
got no privacy.

If
Only:Facebook
has joined
Google, Microsoft and
Yelp in leaving ALEC
over its denial of
climate change. Now if our politicians could Just Say No.

Hey,
Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone:Hundreds of suburban
Denver students walked
out of classrooms to
protest the dumbing down of their history courses, especially the
re-targeting of the curricula to inculcate “patriotism and respect
for authority” in lieu of lessons about the crimes against humanity
that building and maintaining a capitalist society has required.

Price
of Progress:
That part of the Aw Shucks bombing of ISIS in Syria conducted by F-22
Raptor stealth aircraft (deployed to avoid ISIS air assets) cost $79
million. India's successful mission to Mars cost $74 million. Pot/Kettles:Proving
that his grip on reality is slipping away, Turkish
President
Erdoğan is chastising
other countries for “not doing enough” to stop foreign fighters
from crossing from Turkey into Syria to join ISIS.

There,
But For The Grace of God...
A man who thought his merchandise was his after he paid for it and
refused to show a Costco employee at the exit a receipt for the goods
was 'detained', which involved breaking his leg. He's suing for
$670,000. I guess I'll keep meekly showing my receipt to the
retiree at the Sam's exit. But I don't have to like it.

Details:
A report
claims that “hydrogen cars show clean, green transport closer to
reality”.
Closer than what? And does this include the pollution emitted in
generating the hydrogen? Free lunch, they've found a free lunch?
Not likely.

Size
Matters: The
United States says it can legally bomb Syria because of the
longstanding international tradition that permits the big Western
countries to do whatever they want when it comes to impotent small
countries, especially those without nukes.

Clueless
in Culloden:
Under the banner of 'We
Are the 45%', the
unsuccessful secessionists, claiming voters were somehow 'tricked',
now threaten to
unilaterally declare Scottish independence. The banner ought to
read “We Are the Bad Losers.”

Easy
Does It: The
National Association of Realtors reports
that existing home sales 'eased' down 1.8% from July and down 5.3%
from a year ago. The drop is due, they claim, because investors
paying cash were no longer investing or paying cash. The
12 Step Program:
Prices in the Eurozone continue their slide as business growth slows
and the recovery needs
recovery from too much austerity. Even Mr. Draghi is beginning to
consider QE to boost things a bit. Too little, years too late.

One
Stop Stopping:
With increasing numbers of young adults, adolescents and the
occasional
child trying to make their way to Syria to
join the jihadists, maybe the various governments should simply
offer them simplified and expedited processing. Then when they show
up, arrest and imprison them. Or summarily execute them. Look,
these folks are not intellectual geniuses and this would save having
to hunt
them down and kill them later. Apples
/ Oranges:
Texas' own Rick Perry says that if Joan Rivers had gone to a hospital
for an abortion she would still be alive. Porn
O'Graph: The Good, the Bad and the Actual.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Not
Taking No For an Answer:
One of democracy's
problems today is the outright refusal of the losing side to accept
the will of the majority. In the US Senate this leads to minority
rule. In Scotland, those who lost the referendum now claim that it
was meaningless and that the struggle has just begun. Strange,
if it had been even
51/49
the other way, they would have been deliriously triumphant.

Question
Period:
Is the
answer to the ‘too big’ problem not more
centralization, but less?

Unacceptable
Tradeoff:
PM Tony Abbott interrupted his campaign to destroy the environment
long enough to warn the Aussies that they were going to lose even
more of their civil rights, under the guise of external threat:
"For some
time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may
have to shift.” I especially like “delicate balance” and
“shift”.

Clueless
In Congress:
Senator Dianne
Feinstein says there's no place for violence in the NFL George
Will: has a far
better grasp of the situation: 'The
problem with football is football -- it is merchandising violence' Reality
Check: What
with all the demonstrations and the speeches about how 'fixing global
warming will spur the economy” it is time for a quick peek at the
way things actually are going to play out. Nothing is going to
change. The real-world political and economic elites are not going
to do a damned thing, for fear that it will cost them some profits.
The CO2 load in the atmosphere will more than double before the end
of the century and that will push up average global temperatures by
about 6 degrees Celsius (11
degrees Fahrenheit). This will lead to all the other bad stuff that
is regularly predicted: flooding seas, torrential rains in some
areas, record drought in others, species extinction, massive refugee
streams and water wars and starvation. That's really what is going
to happen. The rest is just a walk in the sun.

First
Place: Texas
wins first place in petty cluelessness with its refusal to issue a
drivers license to a married woman who took her same-sex spouse's
name.

Move
Along, Nothing To See:
FIFA – the soccer folks – at the conclusion of their
investigation into charges that they solicited and accepted bribes in
awarding the 2018 and 2022 World Cups announced that no corruption
had been found and thus there was no need to release the
investigative report. This
should at least get them a Yellow Card.

Be
Careful Out There:
Because of the increasing threat to US security by guys in stolen
jeeps, the US is going to begin a major overhaul and update of its
nuclear weapons. Just in case we have to turn the Iraqi desert into a
desert.

Other
Names: Larry Summers now, finally, wants the government to undertake a
massive
stimulus program“major”
plan to boost the country’s economic growth by
undertaking to repair and rebuild the aging and decrepit US
infrastructure, calling it “a major growth strategy”. Anything,
as long as it is not called “a stimulus.”

Monday, September 22, 2014

Negligent
Homicides:
Over 100 American children died at the hands of their parents last
year when they did not get vaccinated against the flu. Nearly half
of all kids between 5 and 17 years got vaccinated. That over 35,000
adults die of the same stupidity is their own fault, but it should
not happen to kids. Sure, some who get flu shots catch the flu and
some die. But mostly these are preventable, both the illnesses and
the deaths.

Potato/Potahto:
Various headlines report that 45,000,
60,000,
70,000 or possibly 100,000 refugees, Syrians, or Kurds (or refugee
Syrian Kurds, descriptions vary) have crossed into Turkey
fleeing ISIS forces advancing on the town of Kobane. Turkey
either opened
its border to allow them in or
opened fire on them with tear gas as they tried to enter the
country. It's called the fog of war. Breaking
Bad:
GlaxoSmithKline admitted
they had been bribing doctors and hospitals to prescribe and use
their pharmaceuticals, but only in China. They paid nearly a
half-billion in fines and promised not to get caught doing it again. In China.

Market
Research:
Which 'phablet' do you really need? Neither. Which
is best? Probably the Samsung/Android version. Which one will you
buy? Remember, an Apple a day makes you feel smug.

Debts
To Society:
Thirty-two FL Corrections Department guards have been fired in
connection with “criminal wrongdoing” in the deaths of inmates in
four different state prisons. By and large, there is supposed to be
a difference between being sentenced to jail and being sentenced to
death. Sneak
Attack: After
six years of austerity to kick-start the economy and prevent
inflation from too much borrowing, Europe is now scrambling to
staunch increasing deflation that is in danger of spiraling out of
control. Hopefully not by another round of austerity.

Just
So Story:ISIS has
released the 49 hostages captured from the Turkish embassy in Mosul,
apparently out of the goodness of their hearts, because the Turks
claim no
ransom was paid for the release - unless you count their continuing refusal to take any part in fighting ISIS. Do you think it's going to
rain?

Saturday, September 20, 2014

What is it that the
government is afraid we'll do if we are left unsupervised?

Scottish
Upset: The
historic Royal and
Ancient Golf Club in
St. Andrews, Scotland has voted to admit women to the club for the
first time.

A
Losing Bet:
Shale fracking shares
certain similarities with the subprime mortgage market just before
everything went South. Drillers are having to borrow to pay for
exploration needed to offset the steep production declines in wells
they haven't yet paid for.
Lots of loans are being made to folks who are
spending more than they make and are
not going to be able to pay back
the loans – even while they'll have to come begging for more.
It is a self-inflicted
Ponzi scheme that depends on magical thinking to justify continuing
the dance. Fun
With Math:By
averaging the net worth of Wall Street bankers, Warren Buffet and
Bill Gates with the rest of us, the Federal
Reserve discovered that
household net worth had increased in the second quarter.
Particularly for folks with a lot of money in the stock market.

What
Did You Know And When Did You Know It?
Both NFL and Baltimore
Ravens top executives learned,
in detail, about Ray Rice assaulting his
then-fiancée within hours of it happening – seven months before a
publicity leak forced them to do something other than cover it up. Half
A Loaf: US
officials continue to assure Europe that it does not spy on them and
anyway if
it accidentally
did it isn't spying on them as much as
it used to.

DIY:Home
Depot, do-it-yourself and
save
money place, apparently was doing it themselves over in the
accounting department, where their antique Windows XPe system gave up
personal data on 56 million of their customers. Old
Yeller: For
the 21st
consecutive month, Caterpillar has posted declining global retail
sales. Seem's no one is doing the heavy lifting.

Protecting
& Serving:
In Canada, taking a picture of oil storage tanks makes you a
terrorist, while in the US taking
a picture of police making arrests (which is absolutely legal,
but can be injurious to your health) can get you arrested. If you
make fun of public officials, they
can send SWAT teams to break into your house and search the
place. And if you get stopped by a cop, remember, he
has a taser and you don't. Bad
Hair Days:
Donald Trump's Soho apartment/hotel development is being foreclosed
on – two thirds of the units are vacant. Anybody recall the last
time a Trump project didn't defraud investors and go bankrupt?

Friday, September 19, 2014

Kill
Switch: The
House and Senate have approved arming and training 'moderate Syrian
rebels' to fight against the IS jihadists, but they have to promise
not to use the weapons against Assad. Or us.

Theory
& Practice:
The government of the people, by the people, for the people has
retaliated against over 1,400 whistleblowers. In the last year. Protecting
& Serving:
Another 200 unprocessed rape kits dating back to 1976 have been found
in Memphis, TN. They join 12,000 similarly unprocessed kits that had
been previously discovered.

Quandary:China, along
with cutting its imports of iron ore and other raw materials from Australia as the Chinese economy cools, has now banned the import of
'dirty' coal. In that there is no such thing as “clean coal” -
despite ads in the US claiming just that – Australian coal exports
will also decline.

Vocabulary
Builder:
Define “integration” in the following sentence: President
Hollande has declared that France is ready for “greater EU
integration with Germany.” Submission? Grovelling? Just
So Story:
David Zirin notes that “the NFL is where racketeers condemn child
abusers.” It has also been suggested that the NFL is tax exempt
under the religious exemption. On
The Up and Up:After
20 years of comforting reassurances that the world's population would
peak at 9 billion in 2050, new projections indicate that population
will continue to climb, reaching 11 billion by 2100 and continuing to
climb thereafter. This seems unlikely – there cannot be enough
energy available to grow enough food for that many people. Travel
Planning:
Vladimir Putin says
his troops can reach Warsaw in two days – as well as Bucharest,
Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. I can't find this particular itinerary in
my Royal Viking Lines cruise brochure.

Trendspotting: Projecting from
the rate of territorial decline over the last two centuries, experts
predicted Thursday that the British Empire will be reduced to an area
of eight acres surrounding Buckingham Palace by as early as 2050. Gardening:
If you've been
puzzled by all the breadsticks and salted pasta hoo-hah about
Starboard Value's blitz against Darden's
Olive Garden, forget all the PR stuff and
follow the money. And the money is tied up in the real estate that
the restaurants sit on. The plan is to take over OG, split the restaurant from the land, sell the land, raise the rents and lower the
wages and quality, liquidate the whole thing and smile all the way to
the Caymans. Izzit
True?Now
they come traipsing along and tell us that salt is okay, but that
sugar is even worse than they thought. Don't even ask about those
sugar substitutes. Better just eat dirt. Porn
O'Graph:
What's the big deal about divorce?

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Why do so many stories
about the economy have 'unexpectedly' in the first sentence?

Yesterdays:
Obama makes the fourth successive US president to announce that the
US would solve the world's problems by bombing Iraq. Why do we cling
to the idea that death from the air will carry the day in the desert
– against over 25 years of evidence to the contrary.

Plot
Summary: A
measure of homebuilder
sentiment
is at a 9 year high
while mortgage applications are at a 14-year low.

The
Downward Spiral:
Turkey's newly re-elected Erdogan continues his Islamification of
once secular Turkey by mandating that all school students at all
grades must study Islam. It appears that the majority of Turks want
their country dragged back to the level of religious savagery common
in the middle ages – or in ISIS-occupied Iraq.

A
Little Parsley:
Ten percent of American workers between 35 and 44 get garnish with
their wages – being docked up to 25% of their wages to repay credit
card debt, medical bills or student loans. Often such debts go
uncollected for years as the interest and fees compound, making
repayment nearly impossible and providing an even
larger unearned income
stream to lenders.

Tense:Justice Sotomayor says
technology has
ledcould
lead to “Orwellian world”.

The
Low-Down: The
US cost of living “unexpectedly” dropped by 0.2% in August.
Excluding food and
fuel, the so-called core measure was unchanged, the first time it
failed to increase in almost four years. Let's
hear it for the recovery!

Race
To The Bottom:
The $1.5 billion bribe Nevada extended to Tesla to get the battery
factory brings up the question: Is this really a sensible thing to
do? To bribe industries to come to your state or city, to pay their
employee training costs, to build factories, roads and other
services... for the promise, often not kept, of thousands of jobs at
low wages. It is almost as silly as cities building professional
sports stadiums. But no one dares be the first to quit.

Surprise!
New reports
indicate that as late as 2011 Citi,
BofA and Deutsche Bank continued to launder drug money. Who
thought they'd stop?

Fish
Story: In the
mid 2000's mackerel started showing up in the waters between
Greenland and Iceland, which was not in their traditional range. By
2009 Iceland
set a mackerel quota of
112,000 metric tons. In
2012 bluefin tuna weighing 220 pounds were being occasionally caught.
In the last three months 21 tuna had been caught along with schools
of mackerel. These waters used to be too cold for bluefins; no
longer. Studying
War Just A Little:
The LA school system has decided to return the three grenade
launchers it got from the Pentagon, as being in excess of their
needs. They are keeping 61 semi-automatic rifles and a mine resistant
armored personnel carrier.

Can't
Win For Losing:
Research (finally) has shown that using artificial sweeteners makes
Type 2 diabetes worse, not better. While cutting the calories of
sugar, the sweeteners do more harm than the real deal would, by
increasing blood sugar levels. “Non-caloric
artificial sweeteners may have directly contributed to enhancing the
exact epidemic that they were intended to fight."

It's
A Feature: New
Apple devices come with kill switches that will allow the
government
users to lock the device and erase all the data on it. Something to
deter theft, among other things.

Our Motto

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.